My research interests are focused on understanding how marine organisms respond to environmental stressors and adapt to changing environments. Anthropogenic stressors have changed our coastal marine environments drastically over the last century. I am interested in understanding what makes some individuals, populations, or species more resilient than others to individual or combinations of stressors. I approach these questions using controlled laboratory experiments, field experiments, and field surveys together with molecular 'omics' techniques, such as genomics and proteomics. I use an ecotoxicological approach to understand physiological and molecular responses of organisms to specific stressors, and employ genomics and proteomics combined with ecological experiments to answer ecological and evolutionary processes behind local adaptation, acclimatization, and resilience in marine organisms. The ultimate goal of my research is to provide solid scientific data that will lead to the protection and conservation of marine biodiversity. My primary interest is with coral reef ecosystems, and specifically, I have worked extensively with reef-building corals. I have also worked with other marine organisms, including sea urchins, nudibranch, and algae. I am interested in working with different marine systems as opportunities present. I am also passionate about computational biology and promoting coding for STEM/biology students.

My current project at the Whitehead Lab of UC Davis is about population and evolutionary genomics of Pacific herring populations from Alaska. The Prince William Sound (PWS) Pacific herring population collapsed and has not recovered since the early 1990's following the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The reasons for the lack of recovery remain a mystery. In this project, we are using population and evolutionary genomics tools to understand the causes and consequences of the collapse. We have extensive temporal and spatial data of Pacific herring populations from PWS and 2 nearby Alaska bays spanning 3 decades (temporal), and along the Pacific Coast, expanding from California to Togiak Bay, Alaska (spatial data). We hope to provide novel insights into the causes and consequences of recent dramatic demographic changes in PWS fish, inform novel intervention strategies, and provide modern genomic resources for management and conservation of Pacific herring.

This project is an ongoing collaboration with laboratory experiments that expose Pacific herring embryos and larvae to oil, as well as an infectious virus that causes high mortality in Pacific herring. More information can be found at Tony Gill's website.

For my PhD dissertation and postdoctoral research at the Richmond Lab at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, I investigated the adaptive ability of corals to changing environments, using genetics, genomics, and proteomics. I assessed the genetic/genomic structure and the degree of genetic variation among coral populations, and I have used proteomics and physiology to show the adaptive phenotypes in selected populations. My most significant accomplishment was pioneering a new coral shotgun proteomics protocol to effectively assess coral health through a collaboration with Drs. Brook Nunn and Emma Timmins-Schiffman at the University of Washington. We have successfully identified over 3,000 coral proteins, which has led to the discovery of resilient corals that have adapted to their high-stress nearshore local environments, but potentially at the cost of genetic diversity.

You can find more details about this project and research results in my publications: Tisthammer et al. (2020) Genetic structure is stronger across human-impacted habitats than among islands in the coral Porites lobata and Tisthammer et al. (2021) Physiological and molecular responses of lobe coral indicate nearshore adaptations to anthropogenic stressors.